This article has numerous edit wars by proponents of various inventors related to the primacy of the invention of the ELECTROMAGNETIC telephone.

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In 1840, American Charles Grafton Page+ passed an electric current through a coil of wire placed between the poles of a horseshoe magnet. He observed that connecting and disconnecting the current caused a ringing sound in the magnet. He called this effect "galvanic music".

Innocenzo Manzetti+ considered the idea of a telephone as early as 1844, and may have made one in 1864, as an enhancement to an automaton+ built by him in 1849. He is considered by many as the inventor of the telephone.

Charles Bourseul+ was a French telegraph engineer who proposed (but did not build) the first design of a make-and-break telephone in 1854. That is about the same time that Meucci later claimed to have created his first attempt at the telephone in Italy.

Bourseul explained: “Suppose that a man speaks near a movable disc sufficiently flexible to lose none of the vibrations of the voice; that this disc alternately makes and breaks the currents from a battery: you may have at a distance another disc which will simultaneously execute the same vibrations.... It is certain that, in a more or less distant future, speech will be transmitted by electricity. I have made experiments in this direction; they are delicate and demand time and patience, but the approximations obtained promise a favourable result.”

Bourseul died in Saint-Céré, France, at the age of 83.

In 1860 Johann Philipp Reis was the first to produce a functioning electromagnetic device+ that could transmit musical notes, indistinct speech, and occasionally distinct speech by means of electric signals. Reis also introduced the term "telephon" for his device. The first sentence spoken on it was "Das Pferd frisst keinen Gurkensalat" (the horse doesn't eat cucumber salad). In the Reis transmitter, a diaphragm was attached to a needle that pressed against a metal contact. This resembled the make-or-break design of Bourseul, although Reis used the term "molecular motion" (''molekulare Bewegung'') to describe the contact points of his transmitter. The Reis transmitter was very difficult to operate, since the relative position of the needle and the contact were critical to the device's operation. This can be called a "telephone", since it did transmit voice sounds electrically over distance, but was hardly a commercially practical telephone in the modern sense, as it failed to reliably transmit a good copy of any supplied sound.

Thomas Edison tested the Reis equipment and found that "single words, uttered as in reading, speaking and the like, were perceptible indistinctly, notwithstanding here also the inflections of the voice, the modulations of interrogation, wonder, command, etc., attained distinct expression."

Prior to 1947, the Reis device was tested by the British company Standard Telephones and Cables+ (STC). The results also confirmed it could faintly transmit and receive speech. At the time STC was bidding for a contract with Alexander Graham Bell's American Telephone and Telegraph Company+, and the results were covered up by STC's chairman Sir Frank Gill to maintain Bell's reputation.

An early voice communicating device was invented around 1854 by Antonio Meucci+, who called it a ''telettrofono''. In 1871 Meucci filed a caveat+ at the US Patent Office. His caveat describes his invention, but does not mention a diaphragm, electromagnet, conversion of sound into electrical waves, conversion of electrical waves into sound, or other essential features of an electromagnetic telephone.

The first American demonstration of Meucci's invention took place in Staten Island+, New York in 1854. In 1860, a description of it was reportedly published in an Italian-language New York newspaper, although no known copy of that newspaper issue or article has survived to the present day. Meucci claimed to have invented a paired electromagnetic transmitter and receiver, where the motion of a diaphragm modulated a signal in a coil by moving an electromagnet, although this was not mentioned in his 1871 U.S. patent caveat+. A further discrepancy observed was that the device described in the 1871 caveat employed only a single conduction wire, with the telephone's transmitter-receivers being insulated from a 'ground return' path.

In the 1880s Meucci was credited with the early invention of inductive loading of telephone wires to increase long-distance signals. Unfortunately, serious burns from an accident, a lack of English, and poor business abilities resulted in Meucci's failing to develop his inventions commercially in America. Meucci demonstrated some sort of instrument in 1849 in Havana, Cuba+, but the evidence is clear that this was not an electromagnetic telephone and may have been a variant of a string telephone+ that used wire. Meucci has been further credited with invention of an anti-sidetone+ circuit. However, examination showed that his solution to sidetone was to maintain two separate telephone circuits, and thus use twice as many transmission wires. The anti-sidetone circuit later introduced by Bell Telephone instead cancelled sidetone through a feedback process.

An American District Telegraph+ (ADT) laboratory reportedly lost some of Meucci's working models, his wife reportedly disposed of others and Meucci, who sometimes lived on public assistance, chose not to renew his 1871 ''teletrofono'' patent caveat+ after 1874.

Meucci was recognized for his pioneering work on the telephone by the United States House of Representatives+ in 2002. The resolution said that ''"if Meucci had been able to pay the $10 fee to maintain the caveat after 1874, no patent could have been issued to Bell."'' If Meucci had renewed his caveat, he would have been given an opportunity to prove to the examiner that the device described in his caveat was the electromagnetic telephone described in Bell's patent application.

A retired director general of the Telecom Italia+ central telecommunications research institute, Basilio Catania, and the Italian Society of Electrotechnics, "Federazione Italiana di Elettrotecnica", have devoted a Museum to Antonio Meucci, constructing a chronology of his invention of the telephone and tracing the history of the two legal trials involving Meucci and Alexander Graham Bell.

They claim that Meucci was the actual inventor of the telephone, and base their argument on reconstructed evidence. What follows, if not otherwise stated, is a résumé+ of their historic reconstruction.
* In 1834 Meucci constructed a kind of acoustic telephone as a way to communicate between the stage and control room at the theatre "Teatro della Pergola" in Florence. This telephone is constructed on the model of pipe-telephones on ships and is still working.
* In 1848 Meucci developed a popular method of using electric shocks to treat rheumatism+. He used to give his patients two conductors linked to 60 Bunsen batteries and ending with a cork. He also kept two conductors linked to the same Bunsen batteries. He used to sit in his laboratory, while the Bunsen batteries were placed in a second room and his patients in a third room. In 1849 while providing a treatment to a patient with a 114V electrical discharge, in his laboratory Meucci heard his patient's scream through the piece of copper wire that was between them, from the conductors he was keeping near his ear. His intuition was that the "tongue" of copper wire was vibrating just like a leave of an electroscope; which means that there was an electrostatic effect. In order to continue the experiment without hurting his patient, Meucci covered the copper wire with a piece of paper. Through this device he heard inarticulated human voice. He called this device "telegrafo parlante" (litt. "talking telegraph").
* On the basis of this prototype, Meucci worked on more than 30 kinds of sound transmitting devices inspired by the telegraph model as did other pioneers of the telephone, such as Charles Bourseul+, Philipp Reis+, Innocenzo Manzetti+ and others. Meucci later claimed that he did not think about transmitting voice by using the principle of the telegraph "make-and-break" method, but he looked for a "continuous" solution that did not interrupt the electric current.
* Meucci later claimed that he constructed the first electromagnetic telephone, made of an electromagnet with a nucleus in the shape of a horseshoe bat, a diaphragm of animal skin, stiffened with potassium dichromate and keeping a metal disk stuck in the middle. The instrument was hosted in a cylindrical carton box. He said he constructed this as a way to connect his second-floor bedroom to his basement laboratory, and thus communicate with his wife who was an invalid+.
* Meucci separated the two directions of transmission in order to eliminate the so-called "local effect", adopting what we would call today a 4-wire-circuit. He constructed a simple calling system with a telegraphic manipulator which short-circuited the instrument of the calling person, producing in the instrument of the called person a succession of impulses (clicks), much more intense than those of normal conversation. As he was aware that his device required a bigger band than a telegraph, he found some means to avoid the so-called "skin effect" through superficial treatment of the conductor or by acting on the material (copper instead of iron). He successfully used an insulated copper plait, thus anticipating the litz wire used by Nikola Tesla+ in RF coils.
* In 1864 Meucci later claimed that he realized his "best device", using an iron diaphragm with optimized thickness and tightly clamped along its rim. The instrument was housed in a shaving-soap box, whose cover clamped the diaphragm.
* In August 1870, Meucci later claimed that he obtained transmission of articulate human voice at a mile distance by using as a conductor a copper plait insulated by cotton. He called his device "teletrofono". Drawings and notes by Antonio Meucci dated September 27, 1870 show coils of wire on long distance telephone lines. The painting made by Nestore Corradi :it:Nestore Corradi+ in 1858 mentions the sentence "Electric current from the inductor pipe"

The above information was published in the ''Scientific American+'' Supplement No. 520 of December 19, 1885, based on reconstructions produced in 1885, for which there was no contemporary pre-1875 evidence. Meucci's 1871 caveat+ did not mention any of the telephone features later credited to him by his lawyer, and which were published in that Scientific American Supplement, a major reason for the loss of the 'Bell v. Globe and Meucci' patent infringement court case, which was decided against Globe and Meucci. See Antonio Meucci – Patent caveat+, for the full printed text of his 1871 teletrofono patent caveat.

Around 1870 Mr. C. F. Varley+, F.R.S., a well-known English electrician, patented a number of variations on the audio telegraph based on Reis' work. He never claimed or produced a device capable of transmitting speech, only pure tones.

Around 1874 Poul la Cour+, a Danish+ inventor, experimented with audio telegraphs on a telegraph line between Copenhagen+ and Fredericia+ in Jutland+. His experiment used a vibrating tuning-fork to interrupt the line current, which, after traversing the line passed through an electromagnet+ that acted upon the tines of another tuning-fork, making it resonate at the same pitch of the transmitting fork. Moreover, the hums were also recorded on paper by turning the electromagnetic receiver into a relay+, which actuated a Morse code+ printer by means of a local battery+. Again, la Cour made no claims of transmitting voice, only pure tones.

Elisha Gray+, of Highland Park, Illinois+ (near Chicago) also devised a tone telegraph of this kind about the same time as La Cour. In Gray's tone telegraph, several vibrating steel reeds tuned to different frequencies interrupted the current, which at the other end of the line passed through electromagnets and vibrated matching tuned steel reeds near the electromagnet poles. Gray's 'harmonic telegraph,' with vibrating reeds, was used by the Western Union Telegraph Company. Since more than one set of vibration frequencies – that is to say, more than one musical tone – can be sent over the same wire simultaneously, the harmonic telegraph can be utilized as a 'multiplex' or many-ply telegraph, conveying several messages through the same wire at the same time. Each message can either be read by an operator by the sound, or from different tones read by different operators, or a permanent record can be made by the marks drawn on a ribbon of travelling paper by a Morse recorder. On July 27, 1875, Gray was granted U.S. patent 166,096 for "Electric Telegraph for Transmitting Musical Tones" (the harmonic telegraph).

On February 14, 1876 at the US Patent Office, Gray's lawyer filed a patent caveat+ for a telephone on the very same day that Bell's lawyer filed Bell's patent application for a telephone. The water transmitter+ described in Gray's caveat was strikingly similar to the experimental telephone transmitter tested by Bell on March 10, 1876, a fact which raised questions about whether Bell (who knew of Gray) was inspired by Gray's design or vice versa. Although Bell did not use Gray's water transmitter in later telephones, evidence suggests that Bell's lawyers may have obtained an unfair advantage over Gray.Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell Controversy+

Alexander Graham Bell+ is commonly credited as the inventor of the first practical telephone. The classic story of his crying out "Watson, come here! I want to see you!" is a well-known part of American history. Bell was the first to obtain a patent, in 1876, for an "apparatus for transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically", after experimenting with many primitive sound transmitters and receivers. Bell was also an astute and articulate businessman with influential and wealthy friends.

As Professor of Vocal Physiology at Boston University+, Bell was engaged in training teachers in the art of instructing deaf mutes how to speak, and experimented with the Leon Scott+phonautograph+ in recording the vibrations of speech. This apparatus consists essentially of a thin membrane vibrated by the voice and carrying a light-weight stylus, which traces an undulatory line on a plate of smoked glass+. The line is a graphic representation of the vibrations of the membrane and the waves of sound in the air.

This background prepared Bell for work with spoken sound waves and electricity. He began his experiments in 1873-1874 with a harmonic telegraph, following the examples of Bourseul, Reis, and Gray. Bell's designs employed various on-off-on-off make-break current-interrupters driven by vibrating steel reeds which sent interrupted current to a distant receiver electro - magnet that caused a second steel reed or tuning fork to vibrate.

During a June 2, 1875 experiment by Bell and his assistant Thomas Watson+, a receiver reed failed to respond to the intermittent current supplied by an electric battery. Bell told Watson, who was at the other end of the line, to pluck the reed, thinking it had stuck to the pole of the magnet. Mr. Watson complied, and to his astonishment Bell heard a reed at his end of the line vibrate and emit the same timbre of a plucked reed, although there was no interrupted on-off-on-off currents from a transmitter to make it vibrate. A few more experiments soon showed that his receiver reed had been set in vibration by the magneto-electric currents induced in the line by the motion of the distant receiver reed in the neighborhood of its magnet. The battery current was not causing the vibration but was needed only to supply the magnetic field in which the reeds vibrated. Moreover, when Bell heard the rich overtones of the plucked reed, it occurred to him that since the circuit was never broken, all the complex vibrations of speech might be converted into undulating (modulated) currents, which in turn would reproduce the complex timbre, amplitude, and frequencies of speech at a distance.

After Bell and Watson discovered on June 2, 1875 that movements of the reed alone in a magnetic field could reproduce the frequencies and timbre of spoken sound waves, Bell reasoned by analogy with the mechanical phonautograph that a skin diaphragm would reproduce sounds like the human ear when connected to a steel or iron reed or hinged armature. On July 1, 1875, he instructed Watson to build a receiver consisting of a stretched diaphragm or drum of goldbeater's skin+ with an armature of magnetized iron attached to its middle, and free to vibrate in front of the pole of an electromagnet in circuit with the line. A second membrane-device was built for use as a transmitter.Robert Bruce (1990), page 149 This was the "gallows" phone. A few days later they were tried together, one at each end of the line, which ran from a room in the inventor's house in Boston to the cellar underneath. Bell, in the work room, held one instrument in his hands, while Watson in the cellar listened at the other. Bell spoke into his instrument, “Do you understand what I say?” and Mr. Watson answered "Yes". However, the voice sounds were not distinct and the armature tended to stick to the electromagnet pole and tear the membrane.

Because of illness and other commitments, Bell made little or no telephone improvements or experiments for eight months until after his U.S. patent 174,465 was published.

The first successful bi-directional transmission of clear speech by Bell and Watson was made on March 10, 1876 when Bell spoke into the device, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” and Watson answered. Bell tested Gray's liquid transmitter design in this experiment, but only after Bell's patent was granted and only as a proof of concept+ scientific experiment to prove to his own satisfaction that intelligible "articulate speech" (Bell's words) could be electrically transmitted. Because a liquid transmitter was not practical for commercial products, Bell focused on improving the electromagnetic telephone after March 1876 and never used Gray's liquid transmitter in public demonstrations or commercial use.

Bell's telephone transmitter (microphone) consisted of a double electromagnet, in front of which a membrane, stretched on a ring, carried an oblong piece of soft iron cemented to its middle. A funnel-shaped mouthpiece directed the voice sounds upon the membrane, and as it vibrated, the soft iron "armature" induced corresponding currents in the coils of the electromagnet. These currents, after traversing the wire, passed through the receiver which consisted of an electromagnet in a tubular metal can having one end partially closed by a thin circular disc of soft iron. When the undulatory current passed through the coil of this electromagnet, the disc vibrated, thereby creating sound waves in the air.

This primitive telephone was rapidly improved. The double electromagnet was replaced by a single permanently magnetized bar magnet+ having a small coil or bobbin of fine wire surrounding one pole, in front of which a thin disc of iron was fixed in a circular mouthpiece. The disc served as a combined diaphragm and armature. On speaking into the mouthpiece, the iron diaphragm vibrated with the voice in the magnetic field+ of the bar-magnet pole, and thereby caused undulatory currents in the coil. These currents, after traveling through the wire to the distant receiver, were received in an identical apparatus. This design was patented by Bell on January 30, 1877. The sounds were weak and could only be heard when the ear was close to the earphone/mouthpiece, but they were distinct.

The first long distance telephone call was made on August 10, 1876 by Bell from the family homestead in Brantford, Ontario+, to his assistant located in Paris, Ontario+, some 10 miles (16 km) apart.

Only a few months after receiving U.S. Patent No. 174465 in the beginning of March 1876, Bell conducted three important tests of his new invention and telephone technology after returning to his parents' home at Melville House (now the Bell Homestead National Historic Site+) for the summer. The third and most important test was the world's first true long distance telephone call, placed between Brantford and Paris, Ontario+ on August 10, 1876.Harrington, Stephanie. "Bell Homestead: Home Offers In-depth Look At Inventor", Brantford and Brant County Community Guide, 2002–2003", ''Brantford Expositor+'', 2002.Korfmann, Margret. "Homestead's History Highlighted", ''Brantford Expositor+'', February 22, 1985. For that long distance call Alexander Graham Bell set up a telephone using telegraph lines at Robert White's Boot and Shoe Store at 90 Grand River Street North in Paris via its Dominion Telegraph Co. office on Colborne Street. The normal telegraph line between Paris and Brantford was not quite 13 km (8 miles) length, but the connection was extended a further 93 km (58 miles) to Toronto+ to allow the use of a battery in its telegraph office+."First Telephone Office", ''CWB'', November 17, 1971, pp. 4–5."A .G. Bell's Brantford House Is Museum of the Telephone", ''Toronto Star+'', April 25, 1987, p. H-23.

On a test call one week earlier on August 3, 1876, Alexander Graham's uncle, Professor David Charles Bell, spoke to him from the Brantford telegraph office, reciting lines from Shakespeare+'s ''Hamlet+'' ("''To be or not to be....''")."You Can Tour The House in Brantford Where Bell Worked on His Telephone", ''Toronto Daily Star+'', December 26, 1970. The young inventor, positioned at the A. Wallis Ellis store in the neighbouring community of Mount Pleasant+, received and may have possibly transferred his uncle's voice onto a phonautogram+, a drawing made on a pen-like recording device that could produce the shapes of sound waves+ as waveform+s onto smoked glass or other media by tracing their vibrations. That first Brantford call was followed the next day on August 4 by another call between Brantford's telegraph office and Melville House where a large dinner party exchanged "....speech, recitations, songs and instrumental music". To bring telephone signals to Melville House, Alexander Graham audaciously "bought up" and "cleaned up" the complete supply of stovepipe wire within Brantford."Bell Emphatic in Declaring That Telephone Was Invented Here", ''Brantford Expositor+'', August 10, 1936, p. 15."Use of Stove Pipe Wire Is Related at Banquet: Graham Tells Of Some Early Experiments", ''Brantford Expositor+'', August 10, 1936, p. 17. With the help of two of his parent's neighbours,Patten, William; Bell, Alexander Melville. , Montreal: Herald Press, 1926. N.B.: Patten's full name was William Patten, not Gulielmus Patten as credited elsewhere. he tacked the stovepipe wire some 400 metres (a quarter mile) along the top of fence posts from his parent's home to a junction point on the telegraph line to the neighbouring community of Mount Pleasant, which joined it to the Dominion Telegraph office in Brantford, Ontario.Patten and Bell, 1926, p. 15–16, 19."The Bell Homestead", Montreal, Canada: Telephone Historical Collection, The Bell Telephone Co. of Canada+, December 29, 1954, pp. 1–2.

''Scientific American+'' described the three test calls in their September 9, 1876 article, The Human Voice Transmitted by Telegraph. Historian Thomas Costain+ referred to the calls as "the three great tests of the telephone"."First Long Distance Telephone Call Recalled", ''Brantford Expositor+'', August 11, 1976. One Bell Homestead reviewer wrote of them, "No one involved in these early calls could possibly have understood the future impact of these communication firsts".

A later telephone design was publicly exhibited on May 4, 1877 at a lecture given by Professor Bell in the Boston Music Hall+. According to a report quoted by John Munro in ''Heroes of the Telegraph'':

''
Going to the small telephone box with its slender wire attachments, Mr. Bell coolly asked, as though addressing some one in an adjoining room, “Mr. Watson, are you ready!” Mr. Watson, five miles away in Somerville, promptly answered in the affirmative, and soon was heard a voice singing "America". [...] Going to another instrument, connected by wire with Providence, forty-three miles distant, Mr. Bell listened a moment, and said, “Signor Brignolli, who is assisting at a concert in Providence Music Hall, will now sing for us.” In a moment the cadence of the tenor's voice rose and fell, the sound being faint, sometimes lost, and then again audible. Later, a cornet solo played in Somerville was very distinctly heard. Still later, a three-part song came over the wire from Somerville, and Mr. Bell told his audience “I will switch off the song from one part of the room to another, so that all can hear.” At a subsequent lecture in Salem, Massachusetts+, communication was established with Boston, eighteen miles distant, and Mr. Watson at the latter place sang "Auld Lang Syne", the National Anthem, and "Hail Columbia”, while the audience at Salem joined in the chorus.''

Bell did for the telephone what Henry Ford+ did for the automobile. Although not the first to experiment with telephonic devices, Bell and the companies founded in his name were the first to develop commercially practical telephones around which a successful business could be built and grow. Bell adopted carbon transmitters similar to Edison's transmitters and adapted telephone exchanges and switching plug boards developed for telegraphy. Watson and other Bell engineers invented numerous other improvements to telephony. Bell succeeded where others failed to assemble a commercially viable telephone system. It can be argued that Bell invented the telephone industry. Bell's first intelligible voice transmission over an electric wire was named an IEEE Milestone+.

Elisha Gray+ recognized the lack of fidelity of the make-break transmitter of Reis and Bourseul and reasoned by analogy with the lover's telegraph+, that if the current could be made to more closely model the movements of the diaphragm, rather than simply opening and closing the circuit, greater fidelity might be achieved. Gray filed a patent caveat+ with the US patent office on February 14, 1876 for a liquid microphone+. The device used a metal needle or rod that was placed – just barely – into a liquid conductor, such as a water/acid mixture. In response to the diaphragm's vibrations, the needle dipped more or less into the liquid, varying the electrical resistance and thus the current passing through the device and on to the receiver. Gray did not convert his caveat into a patent application until after the caveat had expired and hence left the field open to Bell.

When Gray applied for a patent for the variable resistance telephone transmitter, the Patent Office+ determined "while Gray was undoubtedly the first to conceive of and disclose the (variable resistance+) invention, as in his caveat of 14 February 1876, his failure to take any action amounting to completion until others had demonstrated the utility of the invention deprives him of the right to have it considered."

Thomas Alva Edison+ took the next step in improving the telephone with his invention in 1878 of the carbon grain "transmitter"+ (microphone) that provided a strong voice signal on the transmitting circuit that made long-distance calls practical. Edison discovered that carbon grains, squeezed between two metal plates, had a variable electrical resistance+ that was related to the pressure. Thus, the grains could vary their resistance as the plates moved in response to sound waves, and reproduce sound with good fidelity, without the weak signals associated with electromagnetic transmitters.

The telephone exchange was an idea of the Hungarian+ engineer Tivadar Puskás+ (1844–1893) in 1876, while he was working for Thomas Edison+ on a telegraph exchange. Puskás was working on his idea for an electrical telegraph+ exchange when Alexander Graham Bell+ received the first patent for the telephone. This caused Puskás to take a fresh look at his own work and he refocused on perfecting a design for a telephone exchange+. He then got in touch with the U.S. inventor Thomas Edison+ who liked the design. According to Edison, "Tivadar Puskas was the first person to suggest the idea of a telephone exchange".

It was then that the Hungarian word "''hallom''" ("I hear you") may have been used for the first time in a telephone conversation when, on hearing the voice of the person at the other end of the line, Puskás shouted "''hallom''". This cannot be confirmed by any original documents, however it has passed into Hungarian modern folklore. ''Hallom'' may have been shortened to the 'hello+' of current popular usage, based on an older greeting that can be traced back to the Old English+ verb ''hǽlan''.

Bell has been widely recognized as the "inventor" of the telephone outside of Italy, where Meucci was championed as its inventor. In the United States, there are numerous reflections of Bell as a North American icon for inventing the telephone, and the matter was for a long time non-controversial. In June 2002, however, the United States House of Representatives+ passed a symbolic bill recognizing the contributions of Antonio Meucci ''"in the invention of the telephone"'' (not ''"for the invention of the telephone"''), throwing the matter into some controversy. Ten days later the Canadian parliament+ countered with a symbolic motion conferring official recognition for the invention of the telephone to Bell.

Champions of Meucci, Manzetti, and Gray have each offered fairly precise tales of a contrivance whereby Bell actively stole the invention of the telephone from their specific inventor. In the 2002 congressional resolution, it was inaccurately noted that Bell worked in a laboratory in which Meucci's materials had been stored, and claimed that Bell must thus have had access to those materials. Manzetti claimed that Bell visited him and examined his device in 1865. And it is alleged that Bell bribed a patent examiner, Zenas Wilber, not only into processing his application before Gray's, but allowing a look at his rival's designs before final submission.

One of the valuable claims in Bell's 1876 was claim 4, a method of producing variable electrical current in a circuit by varying the resistance in the circuit. That feature was not shown in any of Bell's patent drawing+s, but was shown in Elisha Gray's drawings in his caveat+ filed the same day, February 14, 1876. A description of the variable resistance feature, consisting of seven sentences, was inserted into Bell's application. That it was inserted is not disputed. But when it was inserted is a controversial issue. Bell testified that he wrote the sentences containing the variable resistance feature before January 18, 1876 "almost at the last moment" before sending his draft application to his lawyers. A book by Evenson argues that the seven sentences and claim 4 were inserted, without Bell's knowledge, just before Bell's application was hand carried to the Patent Office by one of Bell's lawyers on February 14, 1876.

Contrary to the popular story, Gray's caveat was taken to the US Patent Office a few hours before Bell's application. Gray's caveat was taken to the Patent Office in the morning of February 14, 1876 shortly after the Patent Office opened and remained near the bottom of the in-basket until that afternoon. Bell's application was filed shortly before noon on February 14 by Bell's lawyer who requested that the filing fee be entered immediately onto the cash receipts blotter and Bell's application was taken to the Examiner immediately. Late in the afternoon, Gray's caveat was entered on the cash blotter and was not taken to the Examiner until the following day. The fact that Bell's filing fee was recorded earlier than Gray's led to the myth that Bell had arrived at the Patent Office earlier. Bell was in Boston on February 14 and did not know this happened until later. Gray later abandoned his caveat and did not contest Bell's priority. That opened the door to Bell being granted US patent 174465 for the telephone on March 7, 1876.

Allward designed the monument to symbolize the telephone's ability to overcome distances. A series of steps lead to the main section where the floating allegorical figure of ''Inspiration+'' appears over a reclining male figure representing ''Man, discovering his power to transmit sound through space'', and also pointing to three floating figures, the messengers of ''Knowledge+'', ''Joy+'', and ''Sorrow+'' positioned at the other end of the tableau. Additionally, there are two female figures mounted on granite pedestals representing ''Humanity'' positioned to the left and right of the memorial, one sending and the other receiving a message.

The Bell Telephone Memorial's grandeur has been described as the finest example of Allward's early work, propelling the sculptor to fame. The memorial itself has been used as a central fixture for many civic events and remains an important part of Brantford's history, helping the city style itself as'' 'The Telephone City'.''